Red Dust/Debris
Louisiana, on Jan 2, 2004

I received a call tonight by a family member to go out and take a look at the moon. The time was around 6:30 PM CT and the sky was clear. There was an enormous halo, the magnitude of which I have never seen in my life. The circumference of this halo completely lit up the evening sky at 70-75 degrees over the horizon, and better then an arms length in diameter from the moon in all directions. I tried to get a photo of this with my digital, but I do not have a wide-angle lens to capture such an image. However, I did get some very astonishing photos of what appears to be intense light reflecting off of the moon's surface, causing Winged Globe flares as well as lens flares from the moon itself. In addition there appears to be one or possibly two large objects orbiting near the moon, which may explain the appearance of the ernormous halo and extreme light intensity. Although the moon is at 3/4 brightness now, the photos tend to show a full moon, rather strange I must admit.

Steve